You keep using that word and I do not think it means what you think it means
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
If you?ve been hanging around the LGBTQ+ community in any capacity, especially gay men, you?ve likely heard about tops and bottoms. Maybe you?ve heard or even made jokes about it. Maybe you?ve heard it said in different terms: giver and receiver, pitcher and catcher, etc.
When it comes to sex between two men (or two people with penises), the top is the one doing the penetrating, and the bottom is the one being penetrated.
That?s it.
In the past year or so, I have started seeing tweets and posts along the lines of ?if you see the three little dots when texting someone and you let them go first then you?re a bottom,? or ?tops be like: loudly announces presence when they walk into a room.? Things in that vein.
Something about it always rubbed me the wrong way, so I decided to write about it.
Being a top or a bottom has everything to do with penetrative sex and pretty much nothing to do with anything else. It has no effect on your personality in the way these memes seem to think it does.
It doesn?t affect who texts first, how masculine or feminine you are, or even how dominant or submissive you are. It literally only refers to whether you prefer to give or receive when it comes to penetrative sex. And even then, from what I?ve heard, most people like to switch it up and prefer not to be defined by just that one role.
Personally, I think these memes where you identify yourself as a top or a bottom need to end. Because now there are literal children on social media calling themselves tops and bottoms when they?re not even close to having sex yet. And they shouldn?t be.
It has even gotten to the point where straight people are calling themselves tops and bottoms. When normally, in a straight (at least, a straight cisgender couple), the man is the ?top? and the woman is the ?bottom,? because the man is the one doing the penetrating.
I don?t think I need to explain why straight people adopting gay terminology and applying it to themselves is problematic.
I don?t think I need to explain why children adopting sexual roles for themselves is problematic.
I do think that we need to stop using these terms unless we?re explicitly talking about queer sex and only queer sex.
